


The Tale of the Sleeper at World's End

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Charles Xavier is a Sweetheart, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Erik Lehnsherr is not a Happy Bunny, Everyone Is Gay, Fairy Tale Style, Graphic Death Scene, M/M, Mentions of Ableism, Minor Character Death, Prince!Charles, Sleeper!Erik, Sugarcoated Gay Story, bannedtogetherbingo2020, i will warn in the chapter notes, not one of the above-mentioned mind you, well not all the time he travels on a mule a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26103796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a Prince without claim nor kingdom whose kindness was well-known in all the lands.A strange quest leads him to World's End and beyond, where his One True Love is caught in a dream from which only he can wake him. On his journey, he makes the acquaintance of four extraordinary women - all of them gifted just as he is.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 34
Kudos: 25
Collections: Banned Banned Together Bingo 2020, Banned Together Bingo 2020





	1. The Prince on the Mule

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fill for the BannedTogether2020 prompt "Sugarcoated Gay Story" - all of it. I just decided to split it into parts so potential readers wouldn't be faced with a wall of 10k words of text.  
> I chose to write a fairy tale AU for this fill since 1) fairy tales are generally known to be very cute and sweet and sugarcoated 2) I can't get enough of Sleeping Beauty AUs in which Erik is Sleeping Beauty 3) fairy tales are actually the perfect wrappings for life-lessons etc told to kids at a young age. From a psychological point of view, it is astounding how rich in archetypes of human personalities and relationships fairy tales - especially the traditional folk ones - are. They feature heavy symbolism through which childhood dilemmas are explained and possible solutions presented, and they can really help a child in its development. Bruno Bettelheim has written a whole book about it - _The Uses of Enchantment_ (1976), a very informative read - in which he de-codes several very popular fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Sleeping Beauty. I do not agree with all of his analyses, but that's mostly just because, well, he got some inspiration from _Freud_ of all people. So, a fairy tale can not only sugarcoat a gay story, but also whole psychological journeys. ~~Thank you for coming to my TED talk.~~
> 
> All my thanks to my amazing beta [IreneADonovan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneADonovan) 💙 
> 
> I'm part of an 18+ X-Men discord server! Come join us [here](https://discord.gg/wqkPMEr) (〃￣︶￣)人(￣︶￣〃)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for ableism in this chapter.

Once upon a time, when there was still kindness in the world, there were a King and a Queen in a flourishing kingdom far, far away. They lived happily, for their people’s granaries were always full and the queen had already born their dynasty a healthy princeling, with eyes as pure as the sky and a mind as powerful as the unyielding wind and with the promising name of Charles Francis Xavier.

However, no luck lasts forever. And so, ere the heir had reached his twelfth summer, misfortune broke over the kingdom: After a short and mysterious malady, the King died not on the battlefield, but in his bed; The Queen fell to drink, for she had loved her husband very much, and therefore neglected her duties towards her kingdom and people, while the Prince fell down the stairs – or was pushed, some rumours ran in the darkest corners of the kingdom’s pubs – and lost his legs to the accident, thenceforth bound to his bed or a wheeled chair, never to walk the meadows and streets of his people’s lands again.

Prosperity returned to the capital and the surroundings when finally, the Queen decided to take a new spouse, marrying the wealthy and decisive offspring from the House of Marko. The day of their wedding, the sun shone upon the plaster stones of the city streets and the birds sang in the elder trees, as though they, too, were celebrating the return of good fortune to their country.

In truth, they could not have been more wrong.

King Marko quickly took to his reign not as a kind and caring ruler, but as a tyrant bent on enriching only himself and his bloodline. Soon, the Queen returned to her habit of drowning her sorrows in drink, and the young Xavier heir suffered greatly under the unkind eye of his older step-brother. Late at night, when Marko’s patrols had rounded up any pubgoers which were out beyond the curfew, when the children of the capital and the villages had gone to bed and were shivering in their narrow cots from hunger and fear, when their parents were sat at the kitchen table with despair carving deep and deeper lines into their harried faces every day, the young Prince would clutch at his silk-and-brocade covers, staring into the cruel darkness coiled above him on the baldaquin of his four-poster bed, and weep himself to sleep.

And all while his tears fell and he tossed and turned his torso in disturbed dreams, the pleas and woes of his people would ring out to him, across the fields and cart tracks and tiled roofs of his kingdom, as though they were laying right beside him in bed.

Therefore, it was hardly a surprise that on the day when the princeling had quietly turned twenty years, he declared at the dinner table that he wanted to go out and seek luck and adventure to gift to his kingdom.

The King and his son laughed, their grunts booming across the otherwise quiet and empty hall and making the lonely cutlery on the long, disused dinner table rattle. The Prince’s mother did not even give a wink, but continued to stare blankly into the crimson mirror of her goblet filled to the brim with wine.

“It would only be fitting that you finally turned tail as best as you can, now that you are legally allowed to stubbornly waste your already useless life to your wishes,” the King said and smeared the dripping of roasted pork and turkey from his fingers onto the table spread. “Go. You will certainly not be missed.”

The Prince’s step-brother sneered. “And by that, he means you should go now, this very instant, so that you do not bother our eyes any more with your sorry sight.”

“Thank you, father, for your oh-so kind blessing,” replied the Prince, his smile barely strained from all the insults, and he took the rims of his chair’s wheels into his hands. “And thank you, brother, for your well-wishes. They will certainly delight me in my darkest hours.”

Then, he bade his mother good-night, took his leave from the dining hall and returned to his quarters, requesting to his servants that they help him pack a few sparse belongings and saddle a horse from the castle’s stables.

Dawn had barely greyed the horizon and the heat of summer had not yet returned to caress the plastered walls of the city and the farmsteads when he found himself in the dusty courtyard, his most trusted maid about to aid him in heaving himself upon a pretty chestnut mare whose growth he had supervised ever since she had been born to his natal father’s most beloved horse. However, he had barely grasped the pommel, when the stable doors burst open and out stormed the King, rage painting his rough face even ruddier than usual.

“What do you think you’re doing, you bastard child?” he cried in white-hot outrage, stabbing his finger at the Prince’s chest over and over again. “Do you really think I would let you walk away with the finest horse in my stable?”

“Yes,” said the Prince calmly, “for I have raised her and as an offspring of this kingdom, it is my right–”

“Your right values nothing more than a donkey, or maybe a mule.” Breathing heavily, the King turned around to the maid and the stable boys who had come running and told them, “Saddle one of the delivery man’s mules for this weakling, and lead this beautiful mare back into her box. And then keep quiet about what you have seen today if you wish to keep use of your tongues.”

Already, the Prince could see his maid straighten up, could sense the dismay and the stony resolution in her thoughts that to treat her most kind and caring master in this way deserved the punishment of the righteous. So, quietly, he laid a hand upon her elbow and nodded to the stable boys, avoiding the King’s eyes as they took the mare away and instead led a stout mule with a patchy hide up to him, bound his possessions and finally the Prince himself onto his back before they stepped back and wrung their hands in shame.

“Well then,” the King breathed, his fat fingers making a shooing gesture at the son of his wife, “be on your way, will you?”

The Prince bowed his head, smiling a secret, reassuring smile at his maid and the stable boys. “Yes, my King,” he spoke, gave a tug at his mule’s reins and then, without another glance back at the castle in which he had spent so many fruitless years of his childhood, crossed the threshold of the palace gates.

At last, he was on his way into true freedom – and there, more adventure than he could ever imagine awaited him.

Now, one – or rather more specifically the tyrant King and his wretch of a son – might have thought that without the use of his legs, the Prince would far sooner end up in a ditch somewhere with his throat cut and his possessions robbed than amongst good company. However, in this hypothesis, one could not have been more terrifically wrong.

The Prince had not requested any of his servants to go with him – even though all of them would have been more than willing to follow him to the end of the world and beyond – since he knew the people of his kingdom to be kind and helpful if you were the same to them.

And kind and helpful he was, so it was not long before you could see him knock at a door and be welcomed with wide-open arms in the night, or ride along on his mule by day while surrounded by a following of chattering people of all ages, tending to his needs, receiving honey-sweet thanks and advice from him. If there were any maladies to heal, he was called, for he had read every medic work there was in the royal library and had committed it to his excellent memory. If there was a dispute to settle, he would be invited to mediate with the parties over dinner and mead, so that in the end the squabblers would depart jesting and arms linked. And if a village or a family or even a lonely elderly person had reason to celebrate and they heard of his being in the surroundings, they would send for him simply to enjoy his pleasant company and shower him with care and kindness in return.

In such a fashion, the years passed – a whole long five of them – with the Prince only settling in a hamlet of city for as long as it took to both aid Gifted people such as himself as well as ordinary folk. He laughed with them, cried with them and all in all was a far better ruler to them than King Marko could have ever dreamed of being.

Then, Charles came to a big, dark forest. And all of a sudden, he knew that the years he had spent amongst his dear commoners had been mere preparation for what awaited him beyond this wall of leaves and bark.


	2. The Woman in the Well

The Prince’s mule huffed when he tugged at its reins. Gently, it came to a standstill, immediately lowering its head to graze from the herbs and grass bordering the edge of the forest. Charles gave it a few friendly pats on its patchy flank.

To his left, his companion huffed also. She was a young woman of rural beauty, with copper hair and a honeysuckle smile.

“If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking – and I am quite certain that you are thinking what I am thinking that you are thinking because I know what you are thinking – I will have to tell you about the local legends this very instant: Few have had the courage to brave this forest. And none have returned so far.”

Young Jean Grey, an orphan since her adolescence, had accompanied Charles for three whole years now. Though he was only a few summers her elder, she was as precious to him as a daughter to a father.

He smiled at her words.

“Do not worry, my dear. Through all hardship, our powers shall lead us with a secure and safe hand.”

There was just a hint of mischief in her smile as she bowed her head.

They travelled for three whole days and rested for two whole nights, hunting and gathering and living off their provisions, when at last the emerald green of the forest thinned and they stepped out onto a narrow glade. And on that glade, they came across a well.

It was old and worn down by the elements, its rim smooth and shining in the setting summer sun. Brambles hung heavily, blackberries glinting between their broad leaves, snaking across the rough granite of its curved sides, and when Charles ground the heels of his thoughts into the mule’s consciousness to make it trot over so he could glance over the edge, he saw the surface of the water glimmer far, far in the depth, unreachable by any and every thirsty traveller who might come across the well. Rust had a harsh grip on its iron water pulley and chain, and the steel bucket which hung from a hook in the very middle of the well’s roundel wouldn’t budge even as the Prince pulled at the lever with all his might.

It seemed the well had not seen a living soul in a long, long time.

“We can rest under that fir tree’s branches over there,” said his companion by his side, her rose skin turning rusty in the fading sunlight. She glanced furtively at his struggles with the water pulley. “Don’t bother. The dew of a new morning shall quench our thirst.”

However, they had scarcely turned their backs to the so strangely familiar construction in such a remote stretch of forest, when there came a voice from the roundel of stone and iron.

“Drink of me,” whispered the well, “Drink of me, and I shall grant you entry into my thoughts, where a dark and true secret lies sleeping.”

“How can we drink of you,” inquired Charles, “when the rust on your chain prevents us from drawing upon your water?”

“And how can we drink of you,” spoke Jean, “when we do not even know the nature of your secret?”

A sigh sank up from the well, like the echo of a silent winter’s day. “Questions,” uttered the well, “You do not trust me, then – you would do well not to. But since I like you, I shall answer in honesty.”

“Who are you?” asked the Prince promptly, enthralled by such a strange being which seemed not posses body nor mind. “And where are your thoughts? I cannot see them.”

“They are hidden beneath the surface. A surface of diamond and steel my master bestowed upon me many centuries past – just as he bestowed upon me the power to choose the one worthy of my secret, which will tell you of what lays beyond these woods you are braving. Now, prove yourselves strong enough to drink of me.”

“I see no benefits whatsoever which could arise us from this tomfoolery,” spoke the Prince’s companion, but he held her back by her elbow.

“Please,” he implored, “something tells me that I need to know, or I shall die of an innocently broken heart.”

She looked at him with a strangely veiled incredulity, as though he were one of the poor devils in his step-father’s cabinet of curiosities. At last, though, she relented.

“Very well,” said Jean, and with a mere gesture, she unfurled the water pulley’s chain, let it rattle into the depth and return just as swiftly, the bucket brimming with the crystal-clear water of the well.

Charles rummaged in his saddlebag until he pulled forth an earthen cup shaped by clumsy children’s hands – a hospitality gift from the last village they had crossed. He dipped it into the water, gasping as its searing coldness stung the tips of his fingers.

“Goddess.”

Then, he put the rim of the cup to his lips and drank.

No sooner had he swallowed that there came a gurgling from the dark depths of the well, and by his side, his companion shrank back.

“The water! It’s rising!” Jean cried, hands already on the reins of the Prince’s mule to steer it away.

The Prince, however, grasped her wrist. “Don’t,” he pleaded, “for without knowing this secret, I shall surely live my days away in peril!”

So, they stood, rooted to the ground, and watched as the well overflowed, spat and hissed, until the frantic undulations of the water calmed and the surface once more lay flat and peaceful as a mirror.

Only, when the Prince leaned forward gingerly to catch a glimpse of what there was to be found beneath it, he felt his blood run as cold in his veins as the well water.

“There is a woman half-way down,” he whispered to his companion. “A woman in the well. And she is chained with iron.”

As Charles spoke, the singular apparition lifted her head – platinum hair dancing around her lovely features like seaweed – and opened her eyes. They were luminous like shards of glass or diamond, and ere he knew it, they had lured him in – drawn his mind from his body.

Jean’s gasp as he slumped on his mule was the last thing he heard.

Where he was, it was cold. Where he was, it was white.

Where he was, he could walk.

“Is that the secret I am to learn?” He turned to the woman with crystal eyes. “That there is a world beyond the world? One where I rule me, where my mind rules reality?”

She smiled – a thin, painful twist of her lips. “It is not. Consider it a gift you should have been taught much earlier.”

There were steles all around. He ambled over to one and tapped its lucent surface. “Then what is it?”

“Beyond the woods you and your remarkable lady friend are braving–” The woman joined him, and no sooner had she touched the tip of her finger to the monolith than colours began to swirl within it and solidified into Jean’s portrait before it vanished in favour of a dreary cliffside still– “there lays a cliff which is called the World’s End. And beyond World’s End, there towers a castle on a lonely outcrop that springs up from a sea of fog. And in this castle, the love of your life awaits you, bedded on silk and silver, sleeping the years and decades and centuries away until you come and wake them.”

The Prince reeled, clutched his heart – prayed for its beating to slow down lest it burst through his rips. “The love of my life! But there is no such thing! It is a mare, made up for the gullible and broken-hearted.”

“Then what are we?” The woman pinned him with her eyes, her searing, her soothing, her glinting diamond eyes. “Are we but a folk’s tale? I highly doubt it.”

“Yes. No.” Charles licked his lips. “But–”

“Enough, boy,” the woman told him. “I have kept you for too long already. Your lady friend is worrying, and you need be on your way. I have been the first testing – there are two more to come.”

And ere he could ask whatever she might mean by this, the cold and the white and the world beyond the world fell away, shattered like glass, and he awoke to Jean bedding him down onto the forest ground softened by fir needles.

They broke camp as soon as possible the next morning, at Jean’s urging.

“The time is running through our fingers. I can taste it on my tongue,” she told Charles while she helped him lash himself to his mule.

The Prince gazed at his travel companion – at her mussed hair, the dark circles like brushstrokes beneath her eyes, her strained smile – and asked, “Did you get even one second of shut-eye?”

Jean’s smile did not fall. If anything, it softened and sweetened like autumn wine.

“I did not,” she said. “Not really. The woman in the well… _spoke_ to me.”

Moonlight slanting over a face carved from diamond and steel. The murmur of water.

Jean’s hand on the rim of the well, so close and yet so far.

The Prince smiled and gratefully took the cup of well water his companion had offered him alongside her memories.

“And what did she talk to you about?”

“Times long past. Monsters and magic and murder. Though she did not give me any more hints than she did offer to you.” Strapping the last of their belongings to her backpack and hauling it onto her shoulders, Jean had finished their travel preparations. “And she told me I had gorgeous eyes. Shall we?”

Charles nodded and tore his eyes from his dearest friend’s smile to look upon the edge of the clearing and the murky tangle of brambles, beeches and fir trees which lay beyond.

“We shall.”


	3. The Woman in the Sky

They reached World’s End after another three days’ march.

“What a desolate place this is,” said Jean by the Prince’s side.

“I would not have expected any less from the End of the World,” answered Charles.

The sight that lay before them was indeed dreary and disheartening. A vast plain of grass, wind-swept and weather-beaten, had replaced the forest they had traversed, until suddenly it dropped out of sight as though a giant butcher’s knife had beheaded it.

And beyond the drop, there lay a sea of slate-grey clouds; roiling, ever-changing shapes which towered before them like dark beasts lying in wait.

When the Prince looked over to assess his fellow traveller’s reaction, she was frowning.

“I do not see the castle,” she said and raised a hand to shield her eyes, as though it would actually enhance her sight. “Do you?”

He didn’t.

“Maybe we have to draw closer to the edge to see.”

However, Charles had hardly given his mule a clap on the flank to get it to advance than the clouds reeled up and the sky darkened. Jean by his side drew in a breath through her teeth.

“Trouble wherever we go,” she muttered.

The Prince simply shook his head. “No. This is merely the second testing.”

The fog was thickening. Lightning fizzed through the air and made the hair on Charles’ and Jean’s forearms stand on end with a crackling charge. In the distance, far, far beyond the edge of the cliff, came a roar of thunder which made their bones clatter.

“Whatever it is, I’m not leaving your side, my Prince!” spoke Jean and gripped Charles’ hand, her pace easily keeping up with that of the mule’s. “Your Kingdom is destined to see better days under your rule, I’m certain of it.”

“Thank you, Jean,” the Prince murmured. His eyes, however, did not once leave the building apparition before him.

This time, Jean was the first to understand.

“It’s a woman… in the sky.”

The Prince nodded. “Oh! I see her as well now. Are you privy to her thoughts? I can barely sense them.”

“Neither can I.” Jean’s hand over Charles’ tightened.

Then, the Prince tugged at his reins, for they had reached the edge of World’s End and the cloud-filled drop loomed before them, bottomless and with cool gusts of wind springing forth from it like lashes of a whip.

And there, in the ink-black heart of the roiling clouds, hovered a woman; her skin dark as midnight; her eyes clear and blank as the full moon. All around her, her ash-white hair billowed in the winds like a thousand sails.

“What do you seek at World’s End, weary travellers?” she asked, voice deep and thick and rolling with thunder. “Explain yourselves and prove your righteousness, or I shall strike you down where you stand.”

By the Prince’s side, Jean recoiled, and even Charles himself felt in his gut the urge to cower before such a raw, untamed, utterly mind-boggling force of nature. But tied to his mule, its reins firmly clasped in his hand, he stood his ground.

“The word of a woman in a well, who told me I shall find the love of my life here beyond World’s End, has led us here” he spoke, his voice raised against the roaring winds. “We come in peace, wind-rider!”

A tremor went through the woman’s body, held aloft only by her iron control over the elements. “That is what they all say. But since you have met an ally of mine, and since she seems to have put her trust in you, I shall ferry you over this chasm to face a testing – the last of three.”

And with a mere wave of her hand, the curtains of fog and drizzle parted to reveal a lone spire of rock towering in the sea of clouds beyond World’s End, unreachable for any human being who did not possess the power of flight.

“I will come with you,” Jean by the Prince’s side said. “You are our future, and our future shall live!”

“No,” the woman in the sky spoke, and for the first time since he had beheld her, Charles thought he could see an amused smile bloom on her lips. “Your concerns, fire-haired one, are unfounded. The one whom you have followed so admirably will find help as soon as his mount’s hooves touch the ground again.”

Jean’s hand was warm over Charles’. He looked down upon her and smiled.

“Worry not,” he murmured, “I sense that wherever this last testing may lead me, it is neither peril nor deceit.”

At first, his companion said nothing. Then, she leaned up and drew him into a warm, safe embrace. “You’ve always been a naive, trusting fool,” she whispered beside his ear.

“Have I ever been proven wrong in my trust in humanity, then?” the Prince asked as he squeezed her shoulders one last time before he straightened up.

“No. But maybe, just maybe, this is the day.” Jean sighed. “Alright. I will do my best to steady you in these wild torrents as the wind-rider lifts you over. And then, while you seek your one true love, I shall return to the woman in the well.”

Charles winked knowingly at her. “To do what?”

He thought there was a certain redness to his travel companion’s cheeks.

“I shall free her,” Jean muttered more than said, “for I sense myself greatly drawn to her.”

“Then fly if you must, return to her as quickly as you can. Use your power – it was not given to you for nothing.”

Their minds intertwined, and for what must have been but a heartbeat, the Prince felt what his dearest companion felt; felt her longing, her aching, the newly awakened flame within her flickering out to that mysterious apparition in the forest well.

Jean looked him in the eyes.

“I will.”

And so it came that Charles Xavier, fallen prince for many years already, was raised into the airs and taken over gaping nothingness by a goddess’ sheer willforce.

He trembled as Jean’s lonely form shrank further and further, until she was a mere copper speck on the grassy cliff’s vastness of flowing green. Beside him, the wind-rider flew, body soft and pliable as though she herself was part of the air and not a separate entity.

“Worry not,” she murmured, and her voice was one with the howling of the wind and the pitter-patter of the rain. “You are safe in my element’s embrace as long as I wish you to be.”

“Then I will my do my best not to anger you, lest you drop me,” the Prince said jokingly, though his clattering teeth made it difficult to speak.

The black woman’s answer was no less disturbing. “Yes. You would do well not to.”

For a few heartbeats, they drew on in silence, the castle on the rock spire growing nearer and nearer. Charles could make out its stained bull-glass windows, opaque with age but unbroken, and the filigree ramifications of its towers, alcoves and parapet walks – all in a rather old-fashioned style of architecture, but then again, the woman in the well had told him that his One True Love had been lying asleep for centuries and centuries already.

And suddenly, the Prince’s heart ached for this human creature, whoever they might be. A dozen lifetimes spent in the solitude of dreams – what a terrible, terrible fate.

To distract himself, he asked, “And who will I face once you have deposited me on this rocky outcrop? Will they be just as fierce and vastly powerful as you are?”

“The woman who will test you does not possess such raw mastery over the elements as I do,” the wind-rider told him, blank eyes sparking, “but what she lacks in strength she makes up in cunning and stealth. I hold the greatest respect for her – once she was my enemy, but now she is my ally, and had our master allowed it, she would be even dearer to me.”

“Your master? What did he do?”

“Through Magic, he forbade me to ever touch the soil again, and her to ever soar alongside me in the skies.”

“If I lifted the curse, would your master’s spell be made nought with it?”

For a heartbeat, the goddess said nothing. Then, she smiled, though it was not happiness which made the corners of her mouth twist upwards.

“Maybe,” was all she would let him know. “But now, we have arrived and our paths shall diverge.”

And indeed: The hooves of Charles’ mount – which had remained as impassive during the whole flight as only a mule can be when faced with a deadly drop and nothing but thin air holding it up – were touching solid ground once again.

“Thank you,” he said, and for the first time since he had set eyes upon the woman in the sky, he attempted a timid smile himself.

It was not returned. “Don’t thank me,” the goddess murmured. “I only did what I was told to do. You are now in the care of the last woman who shall test you.”

This said, she did not utter another word – not one of luck, not one of farewell – but let the wind take her, lift her away into the slate-grey clouds until she was lost from sight.

Still, the Prince watched the twisting, writhing tendrils of fog and the far, far cliff-face for a long time after she had gone, as though with his gaze alone he could return himself to the safety of the life he had known before this quest. However, he soon found all ties were cut. Jean was no more in sight, and when he reached out with his thoughts, they were only met with coldly drooping silence.

So, he sighed and turned around to at last face the castle, where his last of three testings awaited him – the woman of whom the wind-rider had spoken so dearly, and beyond her his One True Love.


	4. The Woman in the Castle

All was silent when Charles flicked the reins of his mule and watched the castle grow taller and taller before him as his mount trotted through its gates into a wide, overgrown courtyard. Not a voice stirred in the cool air of the clouded afternoon, and the morning’s drew drops still clung to the blades of grass springing up here and there between the cobblestones, undisturbed by both the sun and the movement of living beings. They glittered in the faint silvern daylight like very small, very precious pearls.

“Hello?” called the Prince. “Is anyone here?”

He received no answer. The keep lay abandoned and asleep.

But halt: There had been a noise. Very faint, very far, and yet Charles was certain it had been the deep groan of a human throat.

He lightly nudged his mule’s mind to trudge to where he suspected the source of the sound – a toppled oxen cart by the mews’ dark, dusty entrance – and really, when he had rounded the obstacle, he found himself face to face with a young boy, barely older than the Prince himself had been when his father had died and his kingdom had descended into ruin.

The youth was sitting up, leaning against one of the cart’s bench seats in what must have been an uncomfortable position. Still, he did not move, did not grimace. From time to time, his closed lashes would tremble, and a faint snore would escape from between his gaping lips.

However, the most remarkable thing, Charles found, was his skin. It was neither white nor black nor any other ordinary skin tone – no. In fact, it was green all over. And the boy had no hair, but folds upon folds of skin protruding from his scalp, making for a rather unconventional headdress.

Charles knew who he had just discovered: a Gifted one. Just like him and Jean and the two women he had met on his quest.

“Hello?” he prompted again. “Are you asleep?”

The youth did not answer.

There came another groan, and this time, it had not been the boy. The sound had come from the darkness beyond the stable gates.

The Prince drew in a shuddering breath and allowed his thoughts to expand.

At first, all he felt was the warm sensation of dream. Blurry laughs, smudged images and the occasional frightened heartbeat of a sleeper trapped in a nightmare. Besides the horses and the donkeys and the countless minuscule awareness-flickers of flies, there were not many humans dozing in the barns.

Then, Charles turned his attention to the castle’s main body– and was struck down by a hundred people’s minds caught in the depth of sleep. Maids, servants, cooks, wrights, noblemen, lady-knights, even hunting dogs in their kennels and geese and chicken on the butcher’s block about to be beheaded – all were unconscious, having fallen asleep in the very spot they had been in when the curse had unfolded upon the castle buildings.

“Goddess,” murmured the Prince.

There came a faint laugh from the main hall’s towering oak doors. “Indeed.”

Charles’ heart skipped a beat. Frantically, he turned his head this and that way, and his mind chased after the only awareness awake besides him and his mule– and slid off, like raindrops off lady’s mantle. Quite like it had done when he had met the woman in the well, and then the goddess in the sky.

He had found the one who would administer the third testing. Now he only had to see her, too.

He looked around and beheld nothing but the play of the humid breeze in the grass covering the whole courtyard and a lonely raven grooming its luscious plumages on the chipped stairs leading up to the palace’s main entrance.

“Where are you?” he asked into the cutting silence.

Again came the giggle. Charles let his gaze wander over the castle’s windows – some ajar, some closed tightly – as well as its alcoves and proud spires glinting in a few sparse rays of sunlight. Maybe his mysterious third woman was hiding in the corridors or on a parapet walk.

Only, when he looked back down, he found he had been terribly wrong. Stifling a horrified moan, he gripped the reins of his mule tighter.

For in the spot where the solitary raven had preened its feathers only heartbeats ago, there now lounged a lioness, proud and fierce and with a pelt woven of midnight blue.

“I am the Guardian of the Castle at World’s End,” spoke she, “and mine is the power to determine whether or not you are worthy of that which you covet by seeking out this place.”

“Oh,” the Prince stuttered, “will this entail physical combat?”

The lioness blinked languidly, and as if on clue, a crack appeared in the clouds and bathed her in the honeyed light of the sun.

“No. I will merely make you choose.”

With those words, the feline beast stood upright upon her hind-paws. And as she did so, her coat receded, her snout flattened, her posture straightened out – until she was no more a lioness, but a woman, with azure skin and sulphur eyes and a shock of crimson hair, who faced Charles proudly as though she were unaware of her sheerness.

“Follow me,” she instructed him, gracefully ignoring the blush high on his cheekbones or the way he hastily sought to avert his gaze.

However, she had barely set foot on the upper step and made move to push the palace’s immense oak gates open, when the Prince cleared his throat.

“I cannot. Follow you, I mean.” Abashed, he trailed his eyes on the ground.

The woman by the castle turned. “And why not?”

Then, her piercing gaze fell onto his legs dangling over his mule’s flanks and onto the clasps securing him tightly in his saddle. She let hear a quiet, “Ah.”

“Well, yes,” said the Prince. “I don’t expect you have–”

“May I carry you?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“You will put your arms around my neck and I will hold the back of your knees and your shoulders and carry you up the steps and into the keep,” she said, “if you so wish.”

“I’m not sure I...” Looking everywhere but at her nude form, Charles shrugged.

There was the rustling of cloth, and when he glimpsed at the woman this time, she was wearing the modest attire of a soldier on leave – a battered leather jerkin with a shirt of flax underneath, muddied boots, roughly hewn trousers and an unadorned cloak.

“Am I now decent enough for Your Highness?” she asked and gave a curt, mocking bow.

The Prince sighed. “Quite so. Shall we?”

The interiors of the Castle at World’s End were plunged into a muddled twilight. A thick layer of dust, accumulated over centuries, lay over everything, and the Prince could not suppress a shiver even in the changing woman’s warm and secure grasp.

Everywhere, there were gifted Sleepers: lying on the floor, some alone, some entwined tightly in an embrace; propped up against wall hangings and chairs and each other; frozen in surprised slumber. Their breath made the bull-glass panes of the windows fog up, and the occasional bursts of their moans and nightmares raised the hairs on Charles’ arms and the hackles in his mind. Nothing disturbed their dreams, not even spiders – which would have readily spun their cobwebs over the royal household’s nostrils and hair – for they, too, were asleep.

The woman came to a halt in the middle of the entrance hall.

“Is this where I make my choice?” asked the Prince, careful not to speak directly into her face.

She nodded. “Do you wish to wake the Sleeper Above, the one in the tower–” Quickly, she indicated a winding staircase disappearing upwards in the dusty gloom to their right– “or will you free the Sleeper Below, in the dungeon?”

“I should think I needn’t ponder this for long,” spoke Charles. “After all, one’s One True Tove is rarely found in the cells. The tower it is.”

The woman’s face remained impassive – a carefully composed mask, stoic and acquired over centuries. “Very well, Your Highness.”

Charles’ eyes sought hers out. “Have I chosen correctly?”

Her fingers under the pits of his knees twitched, but he did not know what to make of this cue.

“Experience will tell,” she merely muttered and then began the laborious climb up the stairs.

By the time they had reached the chamber at the very top of the tower, the woman’s breath was stuttering, her legs were shaking, and the Prince’s nerves were profusely frayed.

“I did not know that your master’s spell would grant you no reprieve until you had delivered me to my final location,” the Prince said sorrowfully. “My deepest apologies to you. If I had known, I would have–”

“No. There is nothing you could have done to prevent this.” Panting, the changing woman stumbled over to a wide and richly veiled canopy bed and carefully helped him sit down on the edge of the mattress. “Don’t worry your pretty head – I have lived worse.”

Now this did not exactly appease the Prince. However, it seemed he had finally met the end of his quest, for from behind his back, shrouded by the bed’s velvet-and-brocade curtains, came the regular breathing of the Sleeper.

Quietly, he drew the heavy cloth aside and tried not to sneeze when centuries of dust came adrift and began a frantic roundel in the sparse rays of sunlight filtering in through the chamber’s slitted windows.

Beyond the curtains, bedded on crimson linen and silk, lay a man.

Though his hands were peaceably folded over his breast, the arch of his brows betrayed a sharp, cunning spirit, and there seemed to be a fine smile stubbornly gripping at his lips. Adorned with a richly embroidered tunic displaying a crest foreign to Charles as well as a golden crown – so intricately woven that it had to be the handiwork of a goldsmith with a gift not unlike Jean’s – upon his grey-streaked shock of auburn hair, he made the perfect picture of a noble-blooded individual who had been befallen by some vile enchantment and in such was utterly apt to be destined the Prince’s One True Love.

And yet… And yet. Maybe Charles had expected a more mild-mannered individual, one whose very physique did not tell of a certain proclivity for malice. Maybe one whose cheeks were not quite so hollow, whose nose was not quite so upturned (Charles dared not use the word _piggish_ ), whose hands seemed a little less made for ruling harshly and a little more for caressing tenderly. One whose sleep-shrouded consciousness didn’t reek of secret plans and greedy desires.

Though what he missed most of all was that warmth stirring in his chest which he had always imagined to be his heart finding his counter-piece.

But who was he to be so fastidious about his One True Love? He had found a man on the verge of peril – he would kiss him and thus save him and his people. What fate had in store for him furthermore he would discover after.

So, all doubts pushed aside and the changing woman’s presence forgotten, he pulled himself over to the Sleeper and bent lower to bring their lips to touch.

A few inches from the man’s face, he inhaled. There was the vague smell of dried blood which could not be the Sleeper’s, as well as a whiff of the pretentious eau de cologne which had so been all the rage a few centuries ago. Charles ignored that.

Then, there was a tinkling sound, like glass – or maybe diamond – shattering, except that he did not hear it so much as feel it, and he did _not_ ignore that. It came to him as though from a great distance.

Behind him, the changing woman rasped out a shaken, “Emma!”

When he turned, she was no longer the svelte, composed Guardian he had first laid eyes upon. Her cheeks were of a sickly turquoise pallor, and her eyes betrayed a madness which only centuries of utter loneliness and isolation could have brought on. And her thoughts… Oh, her thoughts roiled yellowish like a thunderstorm, utterly bared now to the Prince’s gaze.

With the mysterious breaking sound, a veil had been lifted from her mind.

“What has happened?” he inquired rather gruffly. “What was that?”

The woman did not answer. All she seemed capable of was staring beyond him at the Sleeper’s unchanged face.

It was then that the Prince decided to bring things to a head. Swiftly, he placed a hand on either side of the slumbering man’s head, licked his lips one last time and braced for impact–

A hand on his shoulders, its fingers hard and unrelenting like claws, gripped him and tore him away.

“Don’t,” said the Guardian, and there was an edge of desperation to her voice which broke his heart, “please don’t. You made the wrong choice.”


	5. The Sleeper Above and the Sleeper Below

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for a graphic death/murder scene in this chapter.

“Unhand me! You are hurting me,” the Prince gasped, writhing in the changing woman’s too-firm hold. “Please, I did not mean to commit such a grave error.”

At this, the Guardian’s gaze softened, and her fingers loosened her stranglehold on Charles’ shoulder. “I do not lay any blame on you, your Highness. If anything, I should apologise for treating you in such a rough fashion, but our desperate situation called for it.”

“What is our situation, then?”

“This _man_ –” The woman’s sneer as she indicated the Sleeper on the canopy bed told the Prince that the term _monster_ would have been far more appropriate in her opinion– “was my master. It was he who enchanted us, the three women who have tested you on your quest, and it was he who condemned us to centuries of relentless suffering. Emma must have been freed from her well, for it was her Magic which kept us from baring our minds to you, and her spell which’s breaking you heard just now.”

The Prince shuddered and drew his roughly woven cloak tighter around his shoulders. Suddenly, the Sleeper’s face did not seem quite so peaceful, and the sun rays sidling in through the slitted windows weren’t quite so honeyed and inviting. So he had almost doomed himself and all the kingdoms with a mere kiss?

“I had a woman with me – Jean, so strong and fierce and kind – who returned to your ally in the well with the intent to release her from her shackles. Hers is the praise for saving us.” Charles sighed. “So the story about my True Love’s Kiss was a lie?”

“The touch of your lips would have woken the Black King no matter your feelings for each other. All he ever wanted was someone whose Magic in matters of the mind was more vast than Emma’s, someone who would be both tenacious and naive enough to surmount every obstacle he posed on the quest to World’s End,” murmured the Guardian. “All the Black King has ever aspired to is _power_.”

Despair bleeding into his voice, Charles asked, “So I made this journey for nothing. What shall we do now?”

For a few heartbeats, the woman was still. Her crimson mane was aflame in the light of the sun, more vibrant now than ever since the Black King’s spell had fallen from the wind-rider’s mind, for outside, the roiling of the clouds had ceased.

Finally, she took a slim dagger encrusted with gems and nacre from an array of blades mounted on the wall and passed it to the Prince, who took it with ginger care. During his childhood at court, he had learned to handle his fair share of weapons, but never had he held one which looked so much like a useless trinket.

Out of respect for her mind’s privacy, Charles refrained from skirting the edges of the Guardian’s thoughts. Instead, he shot her a questioning look. “What am I to do with this?”

“Kill him, Your Highness,” she said coldly. “Kill the Black King. The wrong he did to you may not have been the worst of all that he has done, but he has deceived you the most. The honour is yours.”

Charles felt the blood drain from his cheeks. His heart’s pace picked up. “No. There is no _honour_ in killing a man asleep. I cannot– I _will_ not do it!”

The dagger slid from his slackening grasp and fell to the floor, its impact muffled by the thick carpet of dust.

Blanching once more – now from anger instead of shock – the Guardian cried, “But there is no dishonour in killing a murderer, a tyrant – a man who would take the lives of a woman’s wife and children in front of her eyes and then make her his mindless slave, denying her each and every chance at new happiness for decades, no, _centuries_!”

“I shan’t. I _refuse_ ,” the Prince whispered, and a delicate tear spilt forth from his brilliant eyes. “I do not have it in me to take a defenceless human’s life.”

“But I do.”

And ere Charles could stop her, the changing woman had stepped forward, picked up the dagger and plunged it through the Sleeper’s layers of velvet and silk right into his heart.

Had the Prince still had mastery over his legs, he was sure he would have felt them give way. With a mute scream, he twisted away and hid his face in his hands, put his thumbs over his ears so as to not see the desperate jerks the Black King gave or hear the wet slide of the blade against bloodied flesh as the Guardian drew it back out or the chopped moans falling from the dying man’s lips–

But oh, he was unable to shut away what his Magic could feel. There were the Black King’s thoughts drilling searing holes of pain into the Prince’s skull, half-formed fear and anger edged with pitch-black desperation, and above it all a hatred so immense Charles felt as though he had been stripped bare to be flung into a roaring fire burning with the magnificence of a hundred suns.

And then, that flame was snuffed out as a candle in the draught; crushed as a seedling beneath a boot’s heel; banished into meaninglessness as a drop of water is when it hits the ocean.

When the Prince opened his eyes, the body of the Sleeper lay still and dark. The changing woman still perched over him, her hands now as crimson as her hair, the gem-encrusted dagger slick in her palm. There was a crazed smile on her lips which only vanished when she turned to Charles and let the weapon slide carelessly from her fingers.

“Oh,” she breathed, “I did not want that.”

Charles followed her eyes to his cloak, his vest, his trousers. They were speckled and sticky with the dead man’s rapidly cooling blood.

The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness were the Black King’s heavy-lidded eyes staring at him sightlessly, and then there was nothing but darkness and the tang of copper-iron and strong, blue arms enclosing him.

He came to when the Guardian was already half-way down the winding stairs.

Gasping, he tried to right himself, but she cooed and whispered sweet nothings until he quieted down, until his breathing evened out and the tears no longer pooled in his eyes. He let himself be carried by narrow, dusty windows and over well-trodden stone steps, all words lost to him.

Only when they stepped into the main hall, passing between the countless sleepers to where the Guardian’s footprints in the dust had come from, did he open his lips and croak out, “Could I by any chance have a drink of water, please?”

The woman smiled quietly and squeezed his shoulders once before she shoved a snoring maid with gold-shimmering skin from a stool by the wall and lowered him down onto its dust-free surface with great care.

“If you would wait here, Your Highness” she told him before she turned around and slunk through a low doorway into the bowels of the castle. The rapid pitter-patter of her bare feet on the polished marble tiles soon petered out in the distance.

Charles sighed deeply. His fingers came away wet when he rubbed a hand over his face, sticky with dust and the salt of his tears and sweat.

The blood on his clothes was clotting.

A dry sob wound its way up his throat, a hiccup which sounded like a thunderclap in the murmuring silence of the sleeping castle, and with growing desperation, he sent out his mind on wings which grew broader and broader with every stroke they did.

Hundreds of lives glimmered in the soulless dark of the keep at World’s End, like a myriad of long-stemmed candles in a crypt. And save for the Guardian down in the kitchen, not one had been torn from the Black King’s spell.

Charles longed to join them. The people of the court were dreaming of meadows, of children laughing, of journeys without end and breathing underwater. Some had nightmares, yes, but they were few and far in-between. And if Charles sank with them into dreams, then maybe he could soothe their spirits just as they would mend his.

There was a gaping, aching hole in his chest, a void which drew from him. He had felt people’s lives end before, but never had they died from sheer, point-blank _murder_ – never had a soul struggled so fervently against its fate, fired up by acrid greed to do harm.

Even in death, the Black King had torn a piece of Charles away with him.

The Prince ceased his moping when he soared past a particularly intriguing presence – if the hundreds of minds contained in the castle were the tiny pinpricks dotting the night sky, then this sleeper was the evening star itself.

Charles circled closer, drew the net of his Magic tighter around this one burning awareness until he was able to study its structure as though under a magnifying glass.

What he saw made his throat dry up even more than it already was. Bright and glistening silvern, this mind was saturated with Magic. Strands of it reached out, beyond the sleeper’s awareness, though they were tarnished with the remnants of the Black King’s spell, like iron left out to rust away in the wind and the rain.

And oh, Charles dreaded the sight which unfolded before him once he returned to the spirit’s main construct: archways torn down with pain; once delicate, subtle thoughts boldened by years of darkness; the silent wish to slip away from the bright spark of life.

The Prince thought he had never before encountered anyone with as many nightmares.

“Why have the people not woken yet?” he found himself asking when the Guardian returning drew him from his observations. “Why has the spell not unravelled?”

“Spells woven with the Black King’s range of powers have a tendency to linger,” the changing woman said as she put the rim of a brazen cup to Charles’ lips. “And this one in particular seems to hinge on more than the owner’s life.”

The Prince drank until he thirsted no more and passed the goblet back with a nod of silent thanks.

“What a shame,” he mumbled. Then, curiosity overtaking him, he asked, “But the Sleeper Below – may I see them?”

“ _He_ has not had a visitor in many years,” the Guardian said and smiled, full of sorrow. “I shall take you to him.”

So, Charles slung his arms once more round the changing woman’s shoulders, and she hoisted him up by his knees and back, mindful of her limbs tiring with each passing breath.

“Maybe this time I will have chosen rightly,” the Prince murmured just before the all-encompassing darkness of the cellar’s stairwells swallowed them whole.

There could not have been a place more different from the tower in which had resided the Sleeper Above.

The dungeon’s walls were blackened with soot and mildew, watered by rivulets of dampness springing up here and there in cracks between the ashlars. If the rats had not been struck down by the spell, Charles was sure they would have scurried away with terrified squeaks at the Guardian’s approach.

As it was, they passed a few of those rather unwelcome rodents fast asleep by the side of a dozen snoring prison guards. The Prince marvelled at the warriors’ gifts displayed so openly, evidently fitted for combat and defence.

“How do you see in this gloom?” he asked when they passed through a particularly light-less corridor, crouched low so the changing woman would not hit her head.

“My Gift gives me eyes which see in the dark,” she said, “and if I cannot see, I can still hear and smell.”

Then, they spoke no more, for the air was filled with a deep, rumbling hum which seemed to arise straight from the Earth’s core.

In a weak sliver of light falling in through a narrow opening in the ceiling, the Prince sought to make out the source of the sound. At first, there was nothing. Only when the Guardian pressed him closer to her chest and stepped out of the reach of a door creaking on its hinges did he see.

The brazen lamps rattled in their mountings on the wall. The iron bars of the cells hummed like the tight-strung chords on a bard’s vielle, and all things metal were bent outwards as though an explosion had struck them from their pre-cast form.

And in the biggest of the cells, bathed in the weak glow of an overhead light, lay the most exquisite creature Charles had ever beheld.

He gasped, and his fingers curled tighter into the Guardian’s cloak. “The Sleeper Below – who was he?”

“The son of a brave woman and a tailor – they lived in the city, peaceful and law-abiding, until the Black King learned of their son’s gift and sent his sentinels to recruit him. They did not wish for him to become like us,” the changing woman told Charles as she set him down by the Sleeper’s side. “In a skirmish, they and the boy’s sister were killed. The guards said it was an accident in self-defence.”

The Prince righted his legs and gazed at the ashen-haired, slim-waisted man on the cot in rapt attention. “This is _him_.”

“Indeed.” The Guardian’s smile showed bone-white against the azure of her skin. “Are you pleased with your choice now, Your Highness?”

Charles said nothing and watched.

There was a slight sheen of sweat coating the Sleeper’s forehead, and his eyebrows – bold, yet so delicate – were drawn together in a century-old frown. Quiet bursts of breath and the occasional moan escaped from between his slightly ajar lips, and his eyelashes fluttered, caught in the iron-hard grip of a nightmare.

Gingerly, Charles reached out and brushed his thumb over a cheekbone which was as though carved from ivory, further over the Sleeper’s eyelids, the bridge of his nose – and the man stilled under his touch, his features dissolving into a whisper of pleasure.

“Never have I seen such beauty,” murmured the Prince, and with a soaring feeling spreading in his chest, he shifted closer, mindful of the Sleeper’s wrists which were strapped down with bonds of leather and rubbed raw and bloody.

“He never ceased his struggle,” the changing woman continued her narration. “The Black King would send his mages and medics to dissect him, to take him apart, and yet the boy resisted and grew into a man, handsome and untamed. His Gift is able to untangle this prison’s iron bars, to pull the blood from a soldier’s body, even to rip this castle from its moorings. The Black King hoped to break him at last after he was awakened to rule with a powerful Mind Mage as consort by his side.”

“I shall never break him,” Charles breathed. “I should not be able to. Tarnishing this man would be to commit the worst of crimes.”

And with one last sigh, the Prince leaned forward and touched the Sleeper’s lips with his.


	6. The Kingdom that Was and the Kingdom that Shall Be

The Sleeper woke with a startled gasp.

“Where am I?” was the first thing he uttered, and the second was, “Please, I shall not do it again – I will be good this time!”

The Prince, though, could only clasp his hand over his heart and stare: Never had he seen a gaze of such a drawing magnificence, never had he encountered a voice so clear and elegant, never had he dreamed of beholding such a gorgeous creature, such a stunning mind with his own two eyes. His breath was stuttering in his throat.

“Who are you?” asked the Sleeper, frowning with confusion and anguish written all over his face.

Quickly, Charles’ hands flew to undo the clasps around the beauty’s wrists. “I am Charles Xavier, fallen Prince of the neighbouring kingdom. Shh, gentle. Don’t get up too fast.”

Beneath his touch, the Sleeper’s shoulders quivered. Forlornness bled into his brilliant grey-blue-green eyes.

Quietly, he asked, “Have you… done anything to me? While I was asleep?”

“What– I would never–” spluttered the Prince, outraged, and behind him, the changing woman sighed.

“If you are able to walk, Sleeper Below,” she said, “then now I think is the time to get up.”

The Sleeper offered to carry Charles and relieve the Guardian when they were half-way up the dungeon’s stairs.

“You are tired,” he remarked, “and I must have slept for centuries on end. If Your Highness does not mind, of course.”

“Not in the slightest,” replied the Prince, and when he had his arms tightened securely around the Sleeper’s shoulders and the handsome man had him safely in his grasp, he asked, “What is your name?”

The answer came hesitantly only. “Erik Lehnsherr, Your Highness… but you may change it – if you wish for me to have a name at all.”

Charles frowned. “Why would I want for you to change your name?”

“Kings and Princes and other nobilities get to name their property – do they not?”

Ahead of them, the Guardian’s mind gave a sad thrum, reminiscent of a rougher life now discarded as the past. In the Sleeper’s arms, Charles tensed.

“Whoever said I owned you?”

He received no answer, for all conversation ceased when they stepped out of the damp darkness of the cellar and into the dusty gloom of the entrance hall.

The court had woken at last.

A feathered servant bustled by them, bowed when they saw the Guardian and apologised when they bumped into Erik before scurrying off down an unmarked corridor. Swiftly, the changing woman swooped in and herded the two of them back to the side to lean against a wall hanging.

“The chaos hasn’t even yet started, and when it does, you don’t want to be in the thick of it, believe me,” she muttered as she shielded them from the press of bodies. “We ought to be able to make our way out the gates and to the courtyard if we keep to the walls.”

Barely had she pronounced those words when a piercing scream rang from the winding stairwell which led up to the tower.

“The Black King is gone!” proclaimed a pale nobleman, before his crimson eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted into a lady’s arms on the last steps down.

The crowd’s drowsy murmurs swelled into one outraged, anguished, delighted cry. Maids broke into wide smiles brimming with gratefulness, soldiers threw their blade to the ground. A blacksmith close to the Prince and the Sleeper leaned in, wiped her dusty hands on her even dustier apron and whisper-yelled, “The tyrant has at last gotten what he deserves!”

However, the ones who shouted an enthusiastic “The King is dead!” were soon drowned out by those who cried, “But who will rule us now?”

Sudden silence fell over the court, only disturbed by the creaking of the high-winged doors’ hinges when the Sleeper waved them open with a nod to let first the changing woman and then himself through.

Outside, the stable boys and coach-drivers were crowding around the steps leading up to the main hall, straining for every word which was said inside. The Guardian cut a path through them like a searing knife would cut through butter, and Erik followed suit.

Ere he had pushed fully through the crowd – the Prince muttering apology after apology as his feet poked this ribcage and slapped against that arm – their guide pushed a choked-up cry and set off towards the palace’s archway, her once more bare feet carrying her over the courtyard’s cobblestone as swiftly as a breeze.

“What is it?” asked the Sleeper under his breath.

Charles smiled, and his fingers dug tighter into the man’s ragged, dusty tunic. “Her lover.”

They watched in silence as a godly figure detached herself from the shadows of the castle gate, shrouded in clouds of ivory hair, and opened her arms widely to catch the changing woman flying towards her, all crimson locks and smiling thoughts. The Prince could have sworn that electricity crackled through the air and made the hairs on his arm stand on end when the wind-rider bent low and put her lips to the Guardian’s cheeks, kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her smiling mouth.

“Oh,” muttered the Sleeper, and then said no more, but turned his face up towards the sun burning in a steel-blue, cloudless sky.

In his arms, the Prince could not help but be enraptured by the sight. If there was anyone more stunning than the moon and the stars, it was surely the man he had woken what seemed like only a heartbeat ago.

Gingerly, he reached up to pluck a mote of dust from Erik’s hair and blushed when the man turned his befuddled grey-green-blue gaze to him. “My apologies,” he muttered. “You must surely be tiring from carrying me in your arms. Please, if you would be so kind to help me on my mount – it’s grazing over there, near the dried-up fountain.”

“Of course, your Highness,” spoke the Sleeper, and for the first time since he had opened his eyes and seen the Prince perch over him did he smile.

Only when he set Charles down by his mule did the frown return to his pretty face once more. “Have the times changed so dramatically that now even royalty rides a peasant’s beast instead of a well-groomed horse?”

Charles chuckled and patted his mount’s flank, before he heaved himself onto its back and began buckling up. “Not quite. I’m afraid you have merely received your True Love’s kiss from a Prince with neither land nor claim.”

“I do not mean to challenge Your Highness,” said Erik, his lowered eyes barely belying the defiance of his thoughts, “but it seems to me that you possess a kindness which is far too vast and a heart which is far too generous. It is no wonder that you have lost your throne.”

“Challenge me all you want, for it is your right, but let me assure you: The day will come on which my kindness and my generosity will not be my vices, but my virtues.”

The Sleeper’s smile lit up with mischief, and finally, he met the Prince’s eyes. “I shall be looking forward to that.”

Charles’ heart sang, and he knew Erik’s swelled with gratefulness. They refrained from devouring each other with their gazes when the Guardian and the wind-rider hurried over to them, arm in arm and with a pleasant flush on their faces.

“Meet my betrothed, the weather-witch Ororo Munroe,” spoke the changing woman at the same time as the wind-rider told them, “With the Black King’s reign over, we shall reclaim our names – behold Raven Darkhölme, proudest and finest warrior of our kingdom.”

Erik bowed his head in solemn greeting. Charles took first Ororo’s hand to blow a kiss on it, then let himself be pulled into an embrace from Raven, the woman who had killed a man for him.

“May your union be blessed, and may the goddesses smile on you,” he said. “But now, it seems you have a new King to elect. Please, let me introduce my favoured candidate – Erik Lehnsherr, a brave man of the people.”

And with those words, he leaned as far as he dared on his mule, took the Sleeper by his shoulder and presented him to the two most powerful women he had ever encountered. Beneath his hands, Erik blushed, but stood his ground.

“He certainly has an air of stubborn resistance about him,” Ororo said as she studied him attentively.

Raven at her side nodded. “He has survived where no one else could have escaped with their life and sanity.”

“With your graceful support and assent, warrior and protector of the Kingdom,” Erik told them, “I would gladly take up the crown. I should make you my most respected advisors and listen to you as I rule our people with kindness and justice.”

“It is decided then.” The weather-witch looked across the courtyard to the castle gates, where the crowds had barely quieted down. “All these noblemen and soldiers and servants can hardly have come to a consensus yet. It will be a child’s play to convince them of your claim to the throne.”

The Prince had watched all these proceedings in silence, and now, he tightened his grip on his mount’s reins.

“It seems my work here is done.” He smiled at his audience of three. “I have completed my quest and am furthermore to return through the Forest into my own lands, to my own people. There are already two who should be eagerly awaiting me by now.”

The Sleeper’s eyes changed as the Prince spoke, a spark of desperation lighting them up from inside.

“Please, you cannot leave,” Erik told Charles and went to grip his hand tightly. “What if I fall asleep again and you are not there to wake me this time?”

With infinite tenderness, Charles took his other hand from his reins and cupped Erik’s cheek. “The time of nightmares is over, my love. From now on, _you_ shall be the ferryman of your own fate.”

“Will I see you again?”

“As surely as the sun will rise and the rain will fall.”

And without another word, the Prince took his eyes off the Sleeper and rode towards the castle’s archway, for he knew that if he looked at his One True Love any longer, he would not find it in himself to ever break away again.

Beyond the keep’s walls, the gaping chasm conjured up by the Black King’s spell had vanished. Where there had been nothing but roiling clouds and empty air – an obstacle surmountable only with the wind-rider’s help – there now sloped fertile farmland, dotted with rural settlements and crisscrossed by slowly awakening country lanes. The Prince clicked his tongue to direct his mule’s slow pace towards the dark wall of brambles and fir trees from where he and Jean had emerged what seemed like a lifetime ago, but had been only this morning.

The sun shone on his face. People he passed greeted him with tongues heavy from sleep and smiles softened by dreams.

To him, it was as though the light had returned into his heart.

Summer had barely given into autumn, when the disgraced Prince’s kingdom was peacefully but firmly invaded by the forces of King Erik Lehnsherr.

Charles Xavier was just taking an early diner in the amiable company of Jean Grey and her spouse Emma Frost – the woman in the well had turned out to be another one of the Black King’s slaves whose name had been stolen by his spell – as the troops marched by outside the tavern, shouting, laughing, singing ancient folk tunes to which the villagers joined in with the spirit of revolution. The heavy footsteps of the hundreds of soldiers made the pub room’s timber beams shake and the cutlery on the tables rattle.

“This can only mean good things,” said Jean as she refilled her wife’s goblet with golden mead. “Anything is better than the Markos’ disastrous reign.”

“As someone who has lived under the rule of another tyrant, I can only agree, sweetheart,” said Emma and tipped her cup to Charles’.

The Prince just smiled. “All that is left to do now is wait and hope.”

And wait and hope they did. Hardly one week later, the capital fell under the vicious assault of the Iron King’s army, and Kurt Marko found himself banished together with his unfortunate offspring. They were to never set foot in either of the Iron Ruler’s kingdoms again, or face the consequences if they did.

Royal messengers were then sent into every nook and cranny of Lehnsherr’s new lands, their dispatch reading that if anyone were to give up the fallen Xavier heir’s whereabouts, they would be rewarded generously.

Now, of course this raised the people’s suspicions. They had come to love their travelling Prince dearly and would have died men, women and children before delivering him into the hands of a blood-thirsty usurper.

Charles, though, reassured them. He had nothing to fear, for the new King’s heart had been well and truly his since the Sleeper had first opened his eyes. And so, not before long, he set off to return to his kingdom’s capital after an absence of five whole years.

The Prince had barely ridden through the city gates when there came shouts of alarm from ahead of him and he had to rein back his mount or risk being crushed by an agitated throng of soldiers.

“Not one of you shall hurt him,” boomed a voice filled with thunder and lightning, “or the King will punish you himself!”

A familiar tangle of thoughts descended then from the sky, and Charles did not need lift his eyes to know he was about to be received by the woman he had trusted with his life. Relieved, he eased his hold on the mule’s reins and smiled when the wind-rider stepped up to him.

“I am pleased to see you again, Ororo Munroe. And I do hope I’m not intruding.”

“No such thing, your Highness,” spoke the goddess. “If anything, it is a relief to finally have you here. Please, let me take you to the King.”

The Prince accepted the escort gratefully and let himself be led through the winding streets and alleys of the city he had once called home until they came to the royal palace. There, he noticed with pleasant surprise that one of his wheeled chairs had been readied for his arrival.

“I would not have thought that my stepfather had left one of my aids intact,” he said as a soldier with slate in the place of flesh helped him transfer from his mount.

Ororo sighed. “You would not believe all the things we have found in this castle – the dust has been heaped so high in the corners that we could fire up the kitchens with it for three whole days, and I’m afraid that some renovations will be in order when you move back in.”

“Oh, I am to move back in?” Charles smirked up at the svelte woman, who was swiftly ushering him through busy hallway after hallway. “How come this piece of news has not reached me yet?”

“I believe the King wanted to be your very own messenger. And here we are already.” They had reached the wide double doors to the throne room, and even as the Prince strained, his Gift could pick up but one single shining consciousness beyond the heavy oak panels. Ororo pushed them open and made sign for him to enter. “Good luck, your Highness.”

And ere he could thank her, she had vanished down the hallway, swallowed by the hustle and bustle of servants, soldiers and noblemen from which only the high vault of the throne room seemed to be spared.

Expectant silence greeted him when he wheeled through its archway, then closed the heavy doors behind himself. They snapped shut with unusually little noise, their impact softened by the Gift of the sole man in the room.

Erik Lehnsherr, King of two people, was standing forlornly in a spot of gentle sunlight streaming in through the high, arched stained glass windows. The cast-iron crown on his head looked heavy, and his shoulders were drawn up as though he was experiencing a constant desire to fly.

Only when he turned and met Charles’ gaze did his tired eyes spark up once more.

“You have come at last,” he breathed before he hurried to the Prince’s side without hesitation and dropped to his knees. “I had feared that I should never see you again.”

“I promised, did I not?” Smiling, Charles took Erik’s hands in his.

The Sleeper, though, did not smile back. “Promises such as these are seldom kept.”

A memory had swum to the forefront of his mind, and when the Prince reached out to pluck at it, he tasted fear and regret and the last words of a young boy’s mother on his tongue: “All will be well.”

It had been a lie.

“I am terribly sorry, my friend,” Charles whispered into the dusty silence of the throne room.

“It has been done. The past can’t be changed and should not be dwelled on.” Erik looked at him, hard and long. “It was my wish that we could discuss other matters. For instance, I hope you forgive my rather unfashionable – some would even say brusque – entrance into your kingdom.”

The Prince shook his head. “You invaded my people without taking even one innocent life. Of course, I forgive you.”

“Very well. I am glad we are of one mind,” said Erik, and this time, Charles did not deceive himself when he thought that his Sleeper’s lips were pulling back into a subtle smile. “But this responsibility you offered to me – the one which I took on only months ago – to reign over my people and now yours as well… It is too much. Please, allow me.”

With regret written all over his face, he reluctantly pulled his hands from Charles’ warm grasp to take off his crown and lay it on the marble floor. Then, he carefully covered it with his palms.

A heartbeat went by. Charles watched with awe as Erik’s thoughts flared, as the tendrils of his Gift lit up and curled through the air, unseen by anyone who could not perceive consciousness the same way the Prince could.

When the Iron King lifted his hands away, there two crowns in the place in which before had been only one.

“The crown, Charles Xavier, is as much yours to bear as it is mine.” Kneeling still, Erik held out one of the coronets. “Please. I want you by my side.”

His breath drawn, Charles lowered his head and let his Sleeper place the crown on his auburn locks. It seemed to him to be a perfect fit, and not at all heavy.

When he straightened up, Erik was already lifting the other iron circlet to his own head. Charles caught his wrists and took the crown from his fingers.

“Let me,” he murmured and delighted in the shiver his words sent down the King’s spine.

However, after he had lowered the intricately woven headband onto Erik’s hair with utmost care, he did not draw away, but cupped his Sleeper’s face in a gentle grasp.

“This shared reign of ours,” the Prince mused, “surely necessitates our union in marriage, does it not?”

He could feel Erik’s lips widen into a smile under his fingers as his thumbs gently caressed the man’s deepening crow’s feet.

“I believe it is indeed how matters are usually arranged when not one but two people wish to rule.”

“Would it be terribly audacious of me to request a kiss out of wedlock, then?”

“Well, since you kissed me awake,” Erik said and leaned up towards him as a flower would sway towards the sun, “I say that the damage has already been done and that really, it probably doesn’t make much of a difference any more.”

Charles chuckled, and then he fell still, for Erik was pressing his smiling mouth to his. He responded in kind, tenderly, firmly, gave in to this strange roundel they were dancing, and on his Sleeper’s lips the Prince tasted no longer nightmares and despair, but the sweet scent of freedom and contentment.

Erik’s hands were warm and firm in his.

The people of their two lands looked upon their blessed union with kind eyes, for they were just rulers, golden of heart and strong of spirit, and their four generals – all wise women devoted to each other – were no different.

Now, the Sleeper was no more afraid of falling into an endless dream than the Prince was of missing his destiny. They had gifted both the Castle at World’s End and the one which the Xaviers and the Markos had inhabited for so long to the folk, for it meant to leave behind their wretched past, and from then on, they lived in the town halls and courthouses of the cities and villages they visited. The people would come to them with their sorrows, their fears and their complaints, and they would listen side by side until they could find a solution to all issues.

In the evening, they retired to their rooms – when there was no feast to celebrate or no knighthood to be awarded – to shed their royal disguises. The Sleeper would become Erik, and the Prince would become Charles. If the day had been slow, they would read to each other or play a game of chess. If the day had been tiring, however, they would slip under their silk-and-linen covers so Charles could listen to the serene thrum of Erik’s mind as he held him – as his mind succumbed to a sleep from which he would, without doubt, wake again come morning.

Erik’s nightmares had become rare, as had the instances in which Charles would find that he could not come to rest from all the scared, anguished, petrified voices in his head. And if such incidents ever occurred, Charles would kiss Erik awake, or Erik would hold on tightly to Charles in his sleep, and in each other’s arms, they would find solace.

“You shall never be alone again, for I could never break you,” Charles would murmur into Erik’s hair.

Quietly, gently, Erik would reply, “And I should never want to leave you, for your kindness has won my heart.”

So ends the story of the Sleeper at World’s End and the Prince who woke him. And as in every sensible fairy tale, they lived happily ever after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it! If you did, please consider leaving kudos and a comment. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, just a "+kudos" or a "loved it!" would make my day!!! It means so much to an author to see people take the time to actually type out words instead of simply hitting one (1) button, and it's a very easy way to make us writers - who dedicate so much of our free time to create content for you - happy!


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